Infokiosk application with bank card payment is one of the most complex projects we've ever done, requiring hundreds of hours of work, but finally efforts have paid off.
What can the application do?
The application, which is totally new for Eastern Europe, benefits of an interactive map where objects existing in the 6th district area can be identified - from official and cultural institutions to restaurants and medical facilities, and through which people from this area can find out the program and the activity of the local public administration institution. Also, info-kiosk's users can read the most important news of the day through live feeds available on the application.
Info-kiosk's most important functionality is to enable people living in the 6th district the payment of fines, fees and local taxes using a bank card.
How we made it
To achieve a properly functioning application, intuitive and above all user-friendly, we combined different technologies and programming languages:
- ActionScript3 and a framework developed in Adobe Air, which allowed us to bring the power of databases in Flash development environment;
- PHP - the main programming language for bank server connections and synchronization between info kiosks data;
- JAVA- the main programming language used for communication between the application and the ID scanner.
The entire program which enables the functionalities is based on 3 entities: info-kiosks as stand-alone application, the server and management administration. Connecting the 3 entities was one of the important steps of the project, in an attempt to ensure a complete and truly useful tool:
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the application is independent and related to other two components, POS and Scanner
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the contact to POS is made through a socket on Ethernet. The communication itself between the application and POS is made following an algorithm, using byteArray;
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the scanner used has the capacity to identify any type of ID, passport, eyes and even fingerprints, however only ID scan function is used in this project. The link to the scanner is done through a socket (which is made from a local server in Java)
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the server application is related to a PHP framework. The server is responsible for gathering / centralizing all data received from the 8 info-kiosks and to send them to adminiastration application and plays an intermediary role between the bank's database and application;
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the administration application is a sister-application of info-kiosks, the maintainer of the database. It was also done in ActionScript 3 and Adobe AIR. Is indirectly linked to the basic application, through the server.
Results matter!
Besides the satisfaction of providing the people of 6th District a tool to make their life a little easier, that would save them from endless queue and grumpy officials, we were glad to discover that we can exceed our own limits, then we can successfully write 5000 lines of code that would result in a very complex application, useful and pleasant for the user.
We enjoyed even more that we had a project requiring a large part of our team, on which occasion we demonstrated once again that constructive feedback and open communication between team members are priceless. The more we appreciated the two, as we had long lasting discussion sessions with Einvest team, with whom we worked great.
The good and the bad, hard work, lost nights, problems, obstacles but also support we're proud to have the signature on a smart, innovative application, an integrated system, scalable by levels of functionality, intuitive and easy to use.